“As nothing was known of this strange disease, certain physicians thought its origin was due to some source of evil hidden in the buboes, and they accordingly opened these glandular bodies. The dissection of the bubo showed sub-adjacent carbuncles, whose rapid malignity brought on sudden death or an illness of but few days’ duration. In some instances the entire body was covered by black spots the size of a bean. Such unfortunates rarely lived a day, and generally expired in an hour. Many cases died suddenly, vomiting blood. One thing I can solemnly affirm, that is, that the wisest physicians gave up all hope in the case of many patients who afterwards recovered; on the contrary, many persons perished at the very time their health was almost re-established. For all these causes, the malady passed the confines of human reasoning, and the outcome always deceived the most natural predictions. “As to treatment, the effects were variable, following the condition of the victim. I may state that, as a fact, no efficacious remedies were discovered that could either prevent the onset of the disease or shorten its duration. The victims could not tell why they were attacked, nor how they were cured. “Pregnant women attacked inevitably aborted at death, some succumbing while miscarrying; some going on to the end of gestation, dying in labor along with their infants. Only three cases are known where women recovered of plague after aborting; while only one instance is on record where a newly-born child survived its mother in this epidemic. Those in whom the buboes increased most rapidly in size, maturated and suppurated, most often recovered, for the reason, no doubt, that the malignant properties of the bubonic carbuncle were weakened or destroyed. “Experience proved that such symptoms were an almost sure presage of a return to health. Those, on the contrary, in whom the tumor did not change its aspect from the time of its eruption, were attacked with all the symptoms I have before described. In some cases the skin dried and seemed thus to prevent the tumor, although it might be well developed, from suppurating. Some were cured at the price of a loss of power in the tongue, which reduced the victims to stammer and articulate words in a confused and unintelligible manner for the rest of their days. “The epidemic at Constantinople lasted four months, three months of which time it raged with great violence. As the epidemic progressed the mortality-rate increased from day to day, until it reached the point of 5,000 deaths per day, and on several occasions ran up to as high as 10,000 deaths in the twenty four hours.”